Effect of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic on beliefs and practices regarding hand hygiene among intensive care nurses: A repeated cross-sectional study

Hand hygiene is an important factor in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections. Studies show healthcare professionals' hand hygiene practices vary and are not at sufficient levels. This study aimed to examine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the beliefs and practices of nurses working in intensive care units (ICU) towards hand hygiene. This was longitudinal, repeated, and cross-sectional study. The study was conducted in 2 phases between January 2,2020 and March 10,2021 in the intensive care unit of a university hospital in northern Turkey. No sampling method was used. The objective was to reach the entire population. The first phase of this study was completed with 119 (76% of the population) ICU nurses and the second phase with 85 (70% of the population) ICU nurses. The data were collected with the personal information form, hand hygiene belief scale (HHBS), hand hygiene practices inventory (HHPI) and the views of the intensive care nurses related to COVID-19. Descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviations, frequency, and percentages and analytical statistics such as t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test were used for data analysis at the significance level of P < .05. The majority of the nurses who participated in the study were female (75.6%; 69.4%), with a mean age of 30.82 ± 5.51 and 30.58 ± 5.51 years, respectively. There was a significant difference (P < .05) between the median HHBS (P = .002) and HHPI (P = .001) scores before and after COVID-19. All nurses (100%) reported that the pandemic was effective in hand hygiene practices. In this study, it was determined that the hand hygiene beliefs and practices of nurses were high, and the scores of nurses' hand hygiene beliefs and practices after COVID-19 increased significantly. Healthcare professionals must always adhere to stringent standards of hand hygiene, rather than merely during periods of heightened challenges. To ensure the sustainability of optimal hand hygiene practices, it is recommended that motivational interventions that strengthen beliefs and practices related to hand hygiene should be implemented and that studies should be conducted to evaluate their effectiveness.